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Sponsored by: Life After Loss

Plea:

Welcome to our Snowdrop Appeal Team. A team so small despite achieving so much that have changed lives for so many.

Set up in 2009 after Greg & Jen Phillips lost their baby daughter Jasmine and named The Snowdrop appeal was named when Greg’s mum came home from her funeral and saw one single snowdrop in her garden. Mary or Nanny P, Lyn with Greg & Jen established themselves as the small little team and were later joined by Suzy to become the team as it is now and that have change many lives forever.

In the beginning Greg’s sister Lyn helped with her face painting and a few other friends helped to get things going. More recently, Greg’s mum has had to take a more sedentary role due to ill health which has now left the four of us to take things forward.

Each has a different role, Greg undertaking many of the record keeping and letter writing roles, Jen organising funding and liaison with the hospital, Suzy maintaining the Facebook website and Lyn working as the events co-ordinator and organising many successful events with family in the park days.

All of us have full time jobs and everything we do for Snowdrop is done in our own time and days off. Each of us have own best skill sets and sometimes it takes some negotiation to bring them together but we always seem to manage this because we all have the same aim to heart and have all experienced the same losses as an Angle family. And that same drive has kept us going to make some very large changes for such a small team.

With the support of some fantastic sponsors, some of the first includes the staff from HSBC and HMS Ocean we were able to get off to a great start raising around £20000 in the first couple of years. Some of that money helped us to buy two cuddle cots for the ward at Derriford Hospital in Plymouth. Sadly, they are rarely out of use but as a consolation, we know the extra time they give to parents and families have been invaluable.

Since then and with the help of many, many other people from all walks of life we eventually managed to raise over £100,000 and have since been able to fully refurbish two rooms on the central delivery suite and equip them with many homely touches and pleasant colours and art to ease the losses of those who use them.

Even during the redesign of the two rooms, paint colours were researched by the hospital to find the best suited colours that are known to help healing. The rooms, one clinical and was designed as a family room were carefully redesigned by the specialist hospital staff with input from the midwives and other staff. Thoughts were given to the dads so that they had some basic facilities in the room so they didn’t have to leave their partners for long periods to go to the restaurants for drinks etc and could stay together as a family.

The adjacent room which was designed in a way that other family members could come and visit and see the baby if they chose to and a cuddle cot was also installed in this with the workings being carefully sound proofed and built into match the furnishings. Dads were also provided a full leather sofa and double pull out bed for nights staying over. Dimmer lighting was fitted in both rooms to avoid the glare of bright hospital strip lighting. Both rooms were opened together in April 2014 and featured on the BBC and ITV news channels.

Since that time, The Snowdrop Team continue to get letters and emails from friends and families thanking us for what has been done and how much easier it made their life at such a hard time.

However, as in all cases and appeals, the fund raising has to keep going and each of the team have continued to give their time and effort in ensuring this has happened. Sometimes this is just going along to an event to say thank you, other times its helping someone organise their own event and arranging for gazebos, banners, posters, sponsor forms to be taken out and picked up and we have all shared our part in this.

In October and after some very ‘strange phone calls’ it was announced that Greg & Jen had been awarded the Prime Ministers ‘Points of Light Award’ for the work they had done. This was very humbling and a very proud moment to remember and remember Jasmine for.

It’s not all been easy sailing however. There have been those events that have been rained off, some that don’t always quite go to plan on the day but somehow we always seem to pull it off, usually with the tenacity Lyn our event’s organiser and Suzy who is frantically changing event dates or locations on Facebook to keep everyone posted.

Last year Greg and Jen were invited to attend an interview presentation of a group of Specialist Midwives who were applying for a new post the hospital was creating as Specialist Bereavement Midwifery Lead. Greg sat on the panel and a superb candidate from a very difficult choice of candidates was chosen. Maureen Cleland who likes to be called Mo was appointed and has proved herself to be a true ambassador for improving services in the hospital.

Mo has kept in close contact with the team and it’s hoped that the next step the team will be taking is to refurbish a room on the gynaecological ward where miscarriages are currently delivered giving every mother at any gestational point the same support and facilities as those of still birth deliveries. Meetings have already begun to discuss the plans for this.

In the longer term, the Snowdrop Team aim to raise around £400,000 to enable a full bereavement area to be fully established and the work will continue to raise funds towards this goal. After this, funds raised will hopefully be used to develop midwives training days on baby loss and bereavement. Please pledge your vote for supporting this small but energised little team get one step closer to their next goal.

With kind wishes,

The Jasmine & Central Delivery

Snowdrop Appeal Team

What others have said:

Since losing Jazzy, Jen and her husband Greg have taken it upon themselves to make sure that they help others ‘we can’t bring our baby girl back, but we can help other people in the same situation’.

They put all their anger, sadness, pain and despair into HELPING OTHERS. They both walked out of the hospital knowing they were going to make a difference and 7 years on and over £100,000 later we are making a difference.